Cape And Capability – England Win At Newlands

What a Test. A brilliant 5-day Test. And what a win. England haven’t won at Cape Town since Ethelred The Unready was sitting on the throne. But Joe Root’s heroes – the Cape Crusaders – have put a sword through this rather sorry record.

After a disappointing day one the team played excellent cricket. I really can’t fault them. Every single individual played his part. Even Zak Crawley, who sadly didn’t make many runs, pulled off a couple of sensational catches in the final session to seal the win.

There were so many heroes in this game. Dom Sibley – who looks like a cross between man and bear – was my player of the match. His maiden Test century was a special moment and it put us in an impregnable position.

Jimmy Anderson was also flawless with the ball – I really hope he’s not too badly hurt – whilst Ben Stokes had yet another game to remember. When he bowls like he did today, with fire and genuine pace, he’s the best all-rounder we’ve had since Botham. Freddie was obviously very good too but Stokes is a better batsman.

The other bowlers also pulled their weight tremendously. Stuart Broad roared in (I love his bowling when he’s in the mood), Sam Curran offered variety and picked up useful wickets, and the attack looked so much better with a frontline spinner in the XI. Silverwood and Co please take note!

Dom Bess didn’t pick up many wickets but he provided control and showed considerable promise. He gave the ball some air – it was refreshing to see a young English off-spinner bowl an attacking line outside off-stump rather than fire in darts at middle and leg. He could become a very handy bowler if he can get the ball to drift away from the right-handers and threaten the outside edge.

Most of the batsmen also enjoyed decent games – which makes a nice change. The man-bear was the only one to pass 3 figures, but Joe Root scored 95 runs in the match, Denly 79 (plus a couple of priceless wickets), and Pope an unbeaten 61 in the first innings. Stokes also made over one hundred runs across the two digs.

Overall this was a very respectable effort from a much-maligned unit. The only slight disappointment was Jos Buttler … but I won’t dwell on that. The ubiquitous Ben Foakes fans will no doubt say what needs to be said about the keeper’s position elsewhere.

My overriding impression of this game, however, was that it was a fantastic advertisement for Test cricket. The atmosphere was great, the views lovely, the ground steeped in history, and the cricket as compelling as a Martin Scorsese epic.

I hope the ECB are suitably embarrassed after rather cynically coming out in support of 4-day Tests last week. Nobody would ask Scorsese to shave 45 mins off his latest Oscar winner – his films just wouldn’t be the same – so the message is loud and clear: don’t mess with a classic recipe chumps.

This series is well and truly on now. We’ve got two flawed teams desperate to climb the rankings with good bowling attacks (for the conditions) and somewhat erratic batting. It’s a perfect formula for exciting cricket.

Were you confident England would level the series today? Personally I was. At the start of play I thought we had about an 80% chance of winning, with the draw 19%, and a South Africa win 1%. That solitary one percent was really just guarding against a de Kock century in a single session.

In the end, however, I think the Cricket Boks will be kicking themselves a bit. The pitch remained pretty good until the very end and they might have saved the game had du Plessis (who I still haven’t seen score any runs live) and de Kock thought harder about attacking the spinners. Their dismissals were slightly freakish but certainly ill-advised. I think their wickets were probably the two crucial moments of the day.

The series now moves on to Port Elizabeth which is another venue I remember fondly. South Africa is easily one of the best tours. The cricket is usually very good, the pitches seem to give everyone a chance, batsmen score runs if they play well, and the sun usually shines.

Basically it’s all good. And this victory feels very good indeed. Happy days my friends. Happy days.

James Morgan

37 comments

  • Really good TEST cricket and an advert for what draw cricket can provide. For SA Faf and De Kock had utter brain farts to rival the usual england batsmen..

  • Yes James this couldn’t have come at a better time as an advert for not messing about with Tests. ICC and retched ECB take careful note. Great all round team effort which is a refreshing change from England. Let’s hope it’s not a flash in the pan. Congratulations to SA for holding out, without a couple of key wickets late on it was beginning to look like a draw.

    • The good news re: the BCCI is that Virat Kohli has come out in favour of retaining 5-day Test. He thinks 4-days Test is a crap idea. This should put the pressure on too.

  • I hope that this game will scotch the idea of 4-day tests completely.
    Denly was getting some impressive turn from the rough to the lefthanders. I was a bit surprised he was taken off.
    I don’t think you should criticise Buttler for his second innings dismissal. The shot wasn’t well-executed, but it was an appropriate attempt in the circumstances.

  • This game was a magnificent advertisement for FIVE DAY test cricket – the final day was an absolute classic. While I acknowledge the importance of Sibley’s innings (and would have been happy with a shared MOM between him and Stokes), Stokes did everything in this match – 47 in what was (Ollie Pope apart) a disappointing England first innings, five catches as England somehow secured a first innings lead after having seemed to have come up a good 100 short, then that (as it turned out) all important increasing of the scoring rate in the second innings with a blistering 72 which enabled Sibley to not worry about increasing his own rate (Stokes did enough for both of them in that regard) and finally, when it seemed that a draw was on the cards picking up those last three wickets with the fastest spell by an England bowler in the course of the match. I now expect England to win the series at the Bull Ring after Port Elizabeth has provided its usual run feast.

    • Yep. Stokes certainly had a great game. However, I’m sticking with Sibley as MOM because he put England in position to win whereas Stokes (admittedly with both bat and ball) pressed home the advantage. For example, would Stokes have been able to bat the way he did in the 2nd innings if Sibley hadn’t established the platform first? Tough call. Both had brilliant games.

      • Stokes edges it for me James because he influenced the game throughout. Decent first innings knock, spectacular second innings one that bought England the time they needed, a brilliant, match-winning spell when everyone looked out on their feet and catching as good as any I’ve seen in 40 years.

  • The result shouldn’t have been a surprise given Test history. I could only find about ten occasions when a team held out in the fourth innings for as long as SA had to do (the only one in the last two decades was “Faf in Adelaide” – and Australia only had three fit specialist bowlers then).

    It was good to see SA show some fight but they were so woeful on days 2 and 3 there was too much to do. The media have been very quick to declare they’ve “found one” in Pieter Malan and I hope they’re right – but Stephen Cook scored a century on debut on England’s last tour and where is he now? Hamza, Pretorius and Maharaj will be lucky to keep their places – and they aren’t strong enough to carry a non-playing captain. Lack of alternatives might save them – for example SA’s next best spinner is on a Kolpak and the paucity of batting options is well known.

    As for four-day Tests, with Kohli coming out against we’ll find out if he is more powerful than the ECB, CA and CNZ combined. Fortunately (this time), I think we know the answer to that….

  • Great test and may be a turning point for England. Also big respect to Joe Root who has shown a lot of dignity under pressure.

  • Totally absorbing Test match. So bog off you idiotic lot hwo want a four day test

  • The result was brilliant but the timing was even better. For a match to be so captivating over the 5 days just after Bozo and Coco display such disingenuous arsery is the best of two-fingered ripostes.

    • Fantastic stuff, and a perfect advert for 5 day Tests (from someone who usually finds draws boring). Credit to Root for trying something different (bowling Denly and himself, moving Anderson to leg slip) when the orthodox wasn’t working, and especially to Stokes for pulling it out of the fire yet again when it just looked like SA were going to escape – but I would still have given Sibley the MOM award.

      • draws are only boring generally speaking when one side has simply batted the other side out of the game.. aka.. bad captaincy on their part OR.. one side has had a collapse and is fighting for the only positive option available to them.. in which case.. why is it boring?? It’s then upto the ‘winning’ side to get them out rather than just set defensive fields and sit back and wait (a la white ball)

  • A great win. I didn’t think they’d do it, right up until the point where Stokes took 8 and 9 in two balls. It won’t scotch the idea of 4-day Tests though, for the simple reason that although this was a wonderful spectacle for the purist, it didn’t make much money. On the subject of money, isn’t it time that some people who are colossally wealthy and who actually care about the game’s heritage tried to wrestle away control of the game from those who don’t? It would take a consortium of billionaires who didn’t care about personal losses (think Jack Walker at Blackburn, squared), but if players could be rewarded for playing Test cricket to a level similar to that of T20, then the current administrators would have to back off from their current trajectory. Test cricket could then be promoted as the pinnacle of the game to people who actually want to watch it, as opposed to the current marketing approach which seems to permanently be chasing people who don’t like cricket (e.g. women with small children!) rather than focusing on those who do. Pie in the sky? Almost certainly. But if something isn’t done, Test cricket will die – not because people have lost interest as we’re led to believe, but because the game’s administrators have deliberately killed it in pursuit of quick bucks.

    • What would be interesting is to know how much it would cost to televise all tests and county 4 day games. Not with superstar commentators like Warne etc but maybe pick some of the up and coming (aka less expensive) commentators.

      Then, set up a online App and have all games streamed live but also available ‘on demand’ . Then have a highlights package available for each game at the end of the day.

      This then, could be ‘charged’ to people and is far easier to consume than Sky/BT etc. You could easily add in sponsorship/advertising to help fund it.

      I bet you’d get way way way more views/people watching than the current model which would then make the advertising/sponsorship go higher and higher over time.

      Let Sky just have the white ball stuff as that’s what they like. Plus, if you stream it (which is the future so lets not waste money putting on ‘normal airwave tv’) then the costs over time are low etc

      It would be interested to actually work it out

  • Who cares about the Man of the Match award? The team splits the proceeds anyway – and quite rightly so, because this was a team performance, and they deserve a few of days of celebratory fizz, R&R and golf. Root’s captaincy was astute at times and lucky at times – but Richie Benaud used to say that a good captain is a lucky captain, and Root’s second innings 61 was masterful until its final stroke, enabling Sibley to become more expansive in his shadow, and to prepare the ground for the Stokes fireworks on the fourth morning. Can we kindly put the captaincy issue to bed for a while, until someone comes up with a serious alternative?

    • Root got it right in this match, but one good call does not negate all the bad calls in previous matches. Have we all forgotten him bowling Archer at a No11 with one slip in the first test? When he is fit again Burns is the obvious captaincy replacement, but it will not happen because the hierarchy neither admit their mistakes or abandon their favourites.

  • Great game won by a truly great player. On Foakes,11 days is plenty of time to get him out there and good to go, If Bess can get selected over Parkinson (and it paid off) then whats the difference,

  • Great test match, funny how a game like that can lift your spirits. I thought Root’s capataincy was good? Once Denly was out everybody else, starting with Root, played very positively alongside Sibley and it allowed an early declaration. I suspect under Strauss or Cook we would have declared around tea on day 4. Also Root quick to spot Denly effective against left handers.
    I thought England caught very well, Stokes dropped a couple of (very hard) chances but some spectacular catches alongside, Root has been very steady at first slip and Crawley with two good grabs on the last day.
    And, finally, good to see Sibley, Malan, van der Dussen and Pakistan opener, Abid Ali, make good starts to their test careers. All have played a good amount of first class cricket, all have first class averages of over 40. Almost seems to work better than picking someone the chairman of selectors saw in a 20/20 on TV, for five minutes.

    • Great point. Root got the declaration about right. I agree that Strauss / Cook might have batted SA out of the game entirely and left insufficient time to bowl them out. Credit to Joe.

  • Great to see us winning a proper test, but does anyone suppose this will have any effect on the direction the ECB are looking to take the game. We have already seen the establishment put the hierarchy on a pedestal for services to cricket in the new year honours list, so what price any sort of backdown.
    Would the new audience they are looking to attract, however ill advised, be prepared to sit through almost 150 overs for less than 250 runs, whatever the result, I think not. The ECB have never shown any remorse about alienating what they see as a bunch of stick in the mud’s who are inhibiting the future direction of the game as it looks to compete against an increasingly impatient public for leisure time activities.
    Yes test cricket in this county attracts a decent audience, but how many of those are traditional cricket lovers and how many go to become part of the entertainment themselves. We now have the spectacle of Mexican waves involving most of the crowd when play slows. This is not a good sign for traditionalists.
    A major problem is so few people play the game regularly that the public no longer have a significant empathy with what is going on in the middle. Hence the boredom threshold lowers and we get that wave.

    • “A major problem is so few people play the game regularly” — This… You will only ever get less and less interested and your threshold for longer more ‘boring’ games drops the less you play .

      ECB won’t care and won’t listen.. They haven’t before and won’t in the future.

  • A win is a win and most of the England team played to their full ability (I exclude Buttler and Curran, the latter of whom bowled like a mid-70mph club opening bowler at times even if he took useful wickets). But in the excitement of such a win we should not overlook the fact that SA threw away the draw. It must be a mystery what Du Plessis and De Kock were thinking when playing the shots leading to their dismissals. The true test of the team must be that it can bowl sides out without help from the best batsmen of the opponents – and that would not have happened but for the brainfarts of those two experienced bats.

    The positives from the game were the indication that Stokes is 100% fit again and that, in Bess, England seem to have a spinner who can tie up an end (although he does not give it much rip). And in Sibley they have a bat with a true test mentality for the first time in years. The negatives were that Crawley looks out of his depth, Curran seems to bowl slower with each game and Buttler just confirms that he cannot keep. So a balance of pluses and minuses; but at least that is better than of late.

    • It was a great test match. I do agree that SA threw the draw away with some very very soft dismissals (Faf, VVD, De Kock), the rest aren’t batters so I don’t care.

      It was nice to see the top 3 for England play properly and then allow the middle order to play their games. Let’s hope they learn to do that CONSISTENTLY !!

      • I agree Sibley and Denly played properly. Crawley both looked out of his depth and too keen to score runs rather than see off the new ball, which is the first role of the openers in tests. I hope I am wrong, but he looks a bit like another whose mental attitude has been shaped by white ball cricket. To provide perspective; Crawley’s FC strike rate is 58, compared with Sibley’s 41. That is a sharp illustration of the difference between a test opener and a white ball player.

        • I do agree that the SR of Crawley in county cricket indicates he may be too attacking (Like the rest of the idiots we’ve previously tried).. However… we should give him 10 Test’s and see how he gets on.

          10 Test’s is enough to see if he’s learning, playing in the right method etc. You can learn technique or to over come a weakness BUT … but… and he is the rub.. he has to show the right mentality and game management to be given the chance..

          Ballance, Bairstow, Lyth, Robson etc etc.. all just won’t change their mentality or techniques so should rightfully never play for England again

  • Great last day! Day Five!!! It was a day of tension throughout as SA really dug in to fight!

    There were signs around the ground to remember another great Day Five!! 2010!! The day Bell and Brigadier Block took on the bowling might of SA Steyn and Morkel to bat nearly all day. Bell lasted until the final overs when Onions came in for the last few balls. Strange then that in celebrating 2010 Day Five, Sky chose not to mention their heroic efforts lauded at the time and gave all the honours to Onions as if two and a bit overs is the only thing that counts, like T20? It didn’t help that the unctuous Nick Knight was in charge who likes to play down any achievement that smacks of Test cricket occupation of the crease for a draw when Highlights are what really count.

    Don’t let them rewrite narratives of great Test matches. It’s the same with granting hero status to Panesar for blocking out the final over in Auckland. Yes remember the final Moments but to disregard the achievements of getting there is absurd. Will the century by Sibley be forgotten in a few years time? Test matches deserve their stories not their cute sound bites. It is a travesty of recalling great battles and dishonours the Sky coverage and puts in doubt the safe keeping of our archive.

    • The difference between the tests you talk about and the era of proper tests can best be seen in the 1973/74 test at Kingston, where Dennis Amiss took nearly 10 hours to score an unbeaten 262 and was assisted by Old, Pocock and Willis batting at 9/10/11, and who occupied the crease for a combined 4 hours plus to secure the draw with 9 wickets down. That is real test cricket.

    • I think the fact people simply remember that game irrespective of who was the hero is a true sign of the games that live long in the memories. Do the one sided results stick in people’s memory?? Not really.. We remember and are inspired by a genuine great spell of bowling (Broad 8-15, Johnson’s pace vs 2013/14 Ashes, Stokes batting at Edgebaston, Edgebaston 2005, KP at the oval in 2005, Ponting 166 and getting out so close to saving the game, Prior’s battle vs NZ was it… Brig Block himself.. KP in India, McCullum’s 300 etc etc)

  • James; I apologise but just cannot resist. Harvey Weinstein did tell Scorcese to cut Gangs of New York when he brought the initial cut in at nearly 4 hours! TBF, cutting from that length is more akin to giving up on ‘timeless tests’. Perhaps the only positive comment you will see about Weinstein these days! :)

  • A very good win indeed and one which I’d like to see repeated but without Buttler as keeper.

    • I’d quite like to see it repeated (in the way they played even if the result goes the wrong way but without Curran too. Bits and pieces white ball player and will most likely NEVER make it as a batter no matter what people keep trying to say. He’s not shown anything other than wanting to biff every ball and just happened to come off vs India.. Just look at his record.. look at the actual numbers in knocks…. Other than that tour… really really really BAD

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